Only three teams above .500 nearing midpoint

Bulls guard D.J. Augustin (14) shoots during Chicago's win on Saturday. With the loss of Derrick Rose for season, the Bulls have joined the ranks of bad teams in the NBA's Eastern Conference.

BY TIM REYNOLDS
Associated Press

MIAMI – Christmas morning, 2008. The Boston Celtics were 27-2. The Cleveland Cavaliers were 24-4. It could have been argued that those teams were well ahead of everyone else, not just in the Eastern Conference, but the entire NBA.

Neither made the NBA Finals that season.

Maybe that's a warning to Indiana and Miami.

When the East's 15 teams wake up on Christmas morning this year, only the Pacers, the Heat and the Atlanta Hawks will be on pace to finish with records of .500 or better.

The last time things wound up so bleak in the East was 1971-72, when only Boston and New York finished with winning records. Of course, back then, the conference had just eight teams.

By any measure, the East is Least right now, by far.

"The thing about the NBA is, you're trying to build the right habits each and every day, then it's the teams that are playing the best and are the healthiest going into the playoffs," Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau said. "So that's what you're aiming for, to continue to improve – and anything could happen."

One thing for sure, outside of Indiana and Miami, there's plenty of room for improvement in the East.

Entering Monday, the Atlantic Division leaders were the Toronto Raptors, fresh off a surprise win at Oklahoma City that left them a mere 11-14 overall.

Combined, teams in the East are winning 44 percent of their games so far; teams out West, 56 percent. Take away the Heat and Pacers (a combined 42-11 entering Monday), and the rest of the East is a putrid 135-214.

And it looks inevitable that some bad teams will be in the playoffs come April.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that five teams with losing records will get on the East bracket; that matches the total of the last six postseasons combined, all on the East side. The West hasn't sent a sub-.500 team to the playoffs since 1997.

Nonetheless, those who look like also-rans in the East hardly sound discouraged.

Those 27-2 Celtics finished 62-20, and the Cavaliers were 66-16 with the NBA's best record. Orlando was seven games behind Cleveland, clearly third-best in the East.

That is, until the playoffs happened. Orlando won a Game 7 in Boston to reach the East finals, then topped LeBron James and the Cavaliers in six games for a trip to the NBA Finals. The Los Angeles Lakers wound up winning the title.

"It's never easy," said James, now with the two-time defending champion Heat. "We knew that. We never thought it would be."

There's also plenty of people still around the Heat organization who know that the season doesn't end on Dec. 25. The 82-game marathon isn't even to the halfway mark.

Take, for example, Christmas 2003. The Heat had been 0-7 that season and were just 11-17 at the holiday break. On Feb. 10 of that season, they were 21-32. On March 2, 25-36. At the finish: 42-40, not just good enough for the playoffs, but good enough for home-court in one round and ultimately a trip to the East semifinals.

That's why Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is not only a staunch defender of the East – young teams are going to get better in a hurry, he said – but also insists that the race is a long way from being classified a two-horse affair.

"You hear all that talk about the Eastern Conference, and how down it is this year," Spoelstra said. "That's really from a simple perspective and you're not really looking at it with any depth at all. That's just the average, uninformed voice out there. If you really looked at it in-depth ... you see about three or four teams that have that type of potential."

Toronto won at Oklahoma City, something no one else has done this season. Boston won in Miami. Detroit won in Indiana and Miami. Brooklyn and New York probably can't stay this bad — among the very worst in the East — all season.

There's still plenty of time for a race. Or if nothing else, some surprises.

"It's a long season, you know, and teams that have injuries now, they get healthy as they go along," said Thibodeau, whose Bulls have lost Derrick Rose for probably another entire season with yet another injury. "Anything could happen at the end."